Yami Shibai Episode 8 Anime Review

A large piece of sushi holding an umbrella.

Aw yes, another creepy episode. Well, there are a few things to explain. Firstly, the salt. Salt is usually used for purification and to bar spirits from entering/crossing a threshold. It could be a door or window, or even poured in a circle around your bed. Usually it’s drawn in a line across the door or at the window sill, not placed in a single bowl, but I guess that’s for the purpose of animation. Hard to see just a white line. It turned black and burnt to ash because of the malevolent spirit.

The noise she made while the little boy stared at her sounded like a butchering of a cicada we usually hear. I really like that this anime changes setting constantly, by the way. There’s something about the ruralness of a wide open countryside that can be scary to city folk like me.

Of course, we encountered the trope of not telling the kid much again and the time-honoured tradition of isolating the problem human in some area until the danger passes. And of course, telling them not to do something, which they are bound to do. To be honest, I kind of expected the potato chips he got from his friend to come to life and, erh, suffocate him in crinkliness.

The horror of the week turns out to be an “Umbrella Goddess”. Except, wait. A real umbrella goddess traditionally has a white one. This lady has a BLOOD RED umbrella. Yeah, goddess my ass. More like demonic hellspawn. I also think this story of the week took influence from the Kasa-obake. She has a long kimono, so her one leg would be covered. And they mentioned she held the umbrella in her mouth. A kasa-obake can do that with its long tongue wrapped around the handle. So, yeah, a mish-mash monstar.

I liked the jump scare at the end. I mean, I think she doesn’t care about the sun because hey, she’s an umbrella. Country folk superstition are unreliable. I suspect that something went wrong as they played pass the telephone, or an important instruction was left out. Maybe more salt was needed, because we saw it was burnt to a crisp. Scary monster, huh?

Well, no, not really. I think that the real REAL horror here is that they locked a little boy in a fucking shed in the countryside for a whole night. Remember, he’s a friend of your son, not your own son. You can’t just do whatever the fuck you want with him, dude. And he’s a city slicker too. I mean, ignoring the fact that there’s a ghost after him. Can you imagine if a snake crawled in? Because it’s not a demon, so salt has no effect. One bite and the little boy might die by morning before he even opens the door. Or what if there’s a strong wind and the shed collapses or something catches fire because it’s summer judging from the watermelons? What the fuck right?

Would you lock your kid in the fucking shed alone? I don’t think so. So why is it okay to lock someone else’s child in there. If you ask me, the real monsters are the two adults here. Umbrella Goddess just wanted to show off her nice parasol. It would have been nice if she slaughtered the two adults.

2 responses to “Yami Shibai Episode 8 Anime Review”

Spoiler: Well, the kid *does* open the door earlier for his friend to give him the snacks, so, yeah, DOOMED. Why the ghost doesn’t barge in earlier isn’t explained, but the series often does that. Heck, for all we know, the rest of the family’s been eaten. As snacks.